An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the skills to perform everyday tasks
Ben Feller:
From 1992 to 2003, the nation's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs. They also showed no improvement in comprehending documents such as bus schedules and prescription labels.
The adult population did make gains in handling quantitative tasks, such as calculating numbers found on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area of literacy, the typical adult showed only basic skills, enough to perform simple daily activities.
Perhaps most sobering: Adult literacy dropped or was flat across every level of education, from people with graduate degrees to those who dropped out of high school.
Inside the numbers, black adults made gains on each type of task tested in the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, run by the Education Department. Hispanics, though, showed sharp declines in their ability to handle prose and documents. White adults made no significant changes except when it came to computing numbers, where they got better.
The results are based on a sample of more than 19,000 adults, age 16 or older, in homes, college housing or prisons. It is representative of a population of 222 million adults.
The 11 million adults who are not literate in English include people who may be fluent in another language, such as Spanish, but are unable to comprehend text in English.
A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century
posted by Adam Lawson @ 12:58 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
"Hispanics, though, showed sharp declines in their ability to handle prose and documents."
This can be expected as it is probably true (?) that the rate of immigration of Hispanics, legal and illegal, exceeds the rate of population growth of native Hispanics, a clearly higher percentage of whom could be expected to be competent in English. So the fraction of immigrants, i.e. those not born in the US, among Hispanics would be growing, and account for this finding.
In any case, whether they speak English or not is irrelevant -- their well-documented greater propensity for criminality, as well as their academic failure and non-achievement rates, whether born here or not, clearly spells future trouble for the US.
their well-documented greater propensity for criminality, as well as their academic failure and non-achievement rates, whether born here or not, clearly spells future trouble for the US
Unfortunately, few of our politicians want to accept those facts. As long as republicans are obsessed with cheap labor and democrats want to maximize the minority vote, little will be done to stop the flow of illegals into our country.
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